LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

Sir: I write to protest the continued use of the pronoun “whom” in your columns. “Whom” is an outdated patriarchalist cryptofascist inflection that serves no legitimate purpose in today’s modern world. Its only use is to keep the masses in bondage to a false notion of “correctness” in language, placing their speech, nay their very thoughts, under the control of the so-called educated classes, who use the position of dominance thus obtained to force the rest of us to eat processed snack foods that shorten our lifespans. My book, Liberation from Atherosclerosis Through Pronoun Reform, is available for Kindle and other ebook readers at what I consider a very reasonable price, so there is really no excuse for ignorance at this point in time.

Also, when is the water company going to replace that clumsy patch they left on Vondera Street? I nearly broke an axle on that thing. —Sincerely, Saponaria Humphries-Plank, Munhall.

Comments

  1. Martin the Mess says:

    I don’t care how bad the street repair crews are in Pittsburgh and its environs. A few years ago, the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation completely resurfaced the street in front of my house, and three hours after their last truck left the now-pristine asphalt surface behind them, the Gas Company came along to tear three big gaping holes in it for routine gas main maintenance.

  2. Dr. Boli says:

    The same method is followed here, and probably everywhere else; but you left out one step. First, the striping crew comes by to paint the street; then the paving crew comes to resurface it; and then the utilities come to dig it up.

  3. Clay Potts says:

    Then the utilities fill in and patch the hole – then the giant sink-hole opens up in the road pulling in a small dog and half the homes on the block…

  4. Anonymous Coward says:

    Ah, the joys of living out in the country! We do not suffer the anxiety of wondering when the authorities will repair the local road; it is a fact of nature that county authorities view gravel as a feature of a transportation system, not a bug. It’s far better than a speed bump.

    To prove my point: a few years ago, the local city paved one of its main throughways on both sides of a major intersection… up until about 100 yards shy of the stoplight. That stretch of road just so happened to be the only part of the road that actually needed repaving.

    Apparently under the impression that, like wine and cheese, a good pothole only gets better with age, they then let that stretch of road sit for 2-3 more years, while other roads with no apparent need of repair received religious attention.

    Inasmuch as 30-40% of all traffic through the city went over this unsightly asphalt, the road had more or less turned to gravel at this point last year, when the city managers decided to widen the road for a couple of miles beyond the stoplight. After several months of tearing up & repaving that area (and still ignoring the fresh gravel) they finally repaired it.

  5. Sean says:

    There is a reason for the apparent bungling of ripping up a freshly-laid road, though it is a stupid, short-sited reason stemming from a lack of good interdepartmental control and cooperation.

    Fresh asphalt is simply softer and easier to rip up than a surface which had been allowed to completely cure.

  1. […] Boli reads the mail: “I write to protest the continued use of the pronoun ‘whom’ in your columns. […]

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